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Mom of 'Baby Lisa' says her arrest is imminent; police deny it

October 11, 2011 | 11:18
am

A Missouri woman whose 10-month-old daughter went missing a week ago says she believes she's about to be arrested by Kansas City police, possibly as early as today, in the case. Police, however, deny plans to arrest the woman.

It's the latest public twist in what's known as the "Baby Lisa" case.

Kansas City police say they have hit one roadblock after another in their bid to find the blond 10-month-old who was reportedly last seen Oct. 3, when her mother, Deborah Bradley, tucked her in for the night. The baby's father, Jeremy Irwin, returned home from a night shift about 3:30 a.m. the next morning, and that's when the couple discovered the baby was missing, they told police.

The FBI has joined the search, which has taken authorities to a local landfill and led to the questioning of a teenage neighbor. They've even looked into a tip that a couple in California were seen with a child matching Baby Lisa's description. Most recently, officials were searching an abandoned well not far from the little girl's home.

But Capt. Steve Young, a spokesman for the Kansas City Police Department, has told The Times that officials still do not have any suspects.

Nonetheless, Bradley believes that police seem determined to pin the potential kidnapping on her instead of focusing on finding the real culprit, according to Ashley Irwin, the missing child's aunt. Irwin told ABC that she believes Bradley's arrest is "inevitable" -- but also misguided.

"It's what the police do," Irwin was quoted as saying. "They don't have any leads, so they just have to pin it on somebody."

Irwin and other relatives, including the baby's grandparents, say they don't believe that Lisa's mother had anything to do with the child's disappearance.

Meanwhile, a Missouri grand jury has begun issuing subpoenas to local TV stations, seeking raw video of interviews with the child's relatives or family friends, according to the Kansas City Star. It appears to be a bid to look for discrepancies. Law enforcement authorities also returned to the child's home this week to search the backyard.

This isn't the first time that police and the child's parents have clashed during the course of the weeklong investigation. At one point, police suggested that the parents were no longer cooperating.

The parents said this wasn't true and that they were only asking for a momentary reprieve from nonstop questioning.

Bradley also has reported to the media that police told her she failed a lie-detector test, but she said she believes that was a ploy because she was not involved in the child's disappearance.